features 09.03.12 Nicola Bozzi
She is known as an architect of anti-sound and master of disconnection. Sarah van Sonsbeeck portrays silence, and makes us aware of its lack. She is one of the nominees for the Volkskrant Art Prize that is awarded at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam. The exhibition opens on sunday March 11th.
boeken 15.02.11 Jolien Verlaek
An intimate portrait of a passionate artist who claims her position in a tumultuous art history.
A Look at the Lives of the Puppets
Videos by Jos De Gruyter & Harald Thys
08/06/09 Christophe Van Eecke
The video Het Fregat (The Frigate) was one of the big hits of the recent Berlin Biennial and the Un-scene exhibition at Wiels, in Brussels. This bizarre spectacle in which actors act out different tableaux vivants around a small replica of a frigate in each scene is typical of the irony in which Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys comment on human social exchange. For the Belgian artist team, humankind is a display dummy, a marionette in a banal and mundane drama that keeps repeating itself.
In 2002, Tiong Ang visited the land of his parents, the People's Republic of China, for the first time. This marked the beginning of a new series of works in which China is both decor and subject matter. Here follows a portrait, occasioned by Tiong Ang’s exhibition at Lumen Travo Gallery in Amsterdam.
James Lee Byars
Rhetoric of Memory
12/12/08 Konrad Tobler
At a time when the myth of the artist is being investigated on all possible fronts, the intriguing oeuvre of James Lee Byars also deserves lots of attention. This American artist (1932-1997) whose work has been shown at the Van Abbemuseum is the subject of a large retrospective in the Kunstmuseum in Bern.
The family house, the flag he carried rolled up under his arm at his father’s funeral, a girl who allowed him to unbutton precisely four buttons on her blouse: scraps of memories from his childhood form the basis of the bizarre magic art of Andro Wekua (Sochumi, Georgia, 1977). A portrait on the occasion of his solo presentation in De Hallen in Haarlem.
Historic Indeterminacy
The Polyphonic Work of Wendelien van Oldenborgh
11/08/08 Anke Bangma
Salah Edin, who plays an Indonesian hero of the resistance; a Surinamese woman, who stands for Johan Maurits of Nassau: the art of Wendelien van Oldenborgh is borne by many voices. In her theatrical video installations and films, performances and lectures, she presents personal versions of history.
The Father, the Son and the Revolution
Felix Gmelin and the Legacy of May 1968
11/08/08 Dominic van den Boogerd
Felix Gmelin has been reworking the experiences of his youth into art. In a critical, yet personal investigation, he subtly unravels the complicated interweaving of self-development, socialization and emancipation with which he grew up in the late 1960s and 1970s. The character of his work is as political as it is therapeutic.
‘Storyboards’ is what Adam Avikainen calls his works comprised of multipartite paintings and text. Sumptuous, science-fiction-like representations and colourful stories, all ready for the film version which probably will never be made, except in the viewer’s mind.